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My name is Kathryn (Kate) Ringland and I am currently a Ph.D. Candidate in Informatics at University of California, Irvine. My areas of interest include: Human Computer Interaction, Ubiquitous Computing, Assistive Technology, and Technology for Individuals with Autism.

Particularly I am interested in looking at the collaborative play, embodiment, and ways to design accessible technology.

Grad Student Workflow, Part 1

I was recently incapacitated by whatever illness was going around campus and when the fog finally lifted I finally appreciated how productive I am on a daily basis. It was time to triage my to do list and I knew some things were just not going to get done when I wanted them to be. However, since my maternity leave 6 months ago, I have been spending quite a bit of time working on my workflow, so things weren’t as dire as they could have been.

What do I mean by workflow? I mean the tools and procedures I have put in place to make sure that my project gets done in a timely, efficient manner. My project in this case is my PhD. And seeing as ‘project PhD’ is HUGE, I knew I wanted to get these things in place before I really start working on my proposal this summer and dissertation shortly thereafter. What this means is I do the following things (and what’s not on this list is be Mom to an energetic, mobile-enough 6-month-old):

reading (a lot of reading)

research, including, but not limited to:

building software/hardware

interviews

user testing/deployments

observations (both in the physical world and virtually)

collecting lots and lots of data

service such as reviewing other papers, mentoring students, and helping with the graduate student association

writing (a lot of writing)

So, in order to stay sane and get everything done, I’ve been devising a way to automate some of my to do list and task and streamlining everything as much as possible. Some of the tools I use are: Google Calendar, Evernote, Dropbox, NVivo, Todoist, Slack, IFTTT, and Scrivener. I will be going over how I use each of these in detail over the next several blogs. They will be roughly in the following order (to be updated with links as they are posted):

3 thoughts on “Grad Student Workflow, Part 1”

Hello, revisiting. I reread the range of your responsibilities … comparing to myself, I have to teach at so many places, to so many different students, in so many different contexts. But it’s really easy. Maybe not for everyone, I don’t know, but it’s a straightforward thing for me to do a good job without straining myself.

But your responsibilities are intellectually intense to a degree far beyond my own. As I read, I realized that I have retreated from that kind of work and responsibility. I didn’t want to think. I’ve probably taken a 3-year vacation from thinking.